James Cameron and His Wife Start the Nation’s First Vegan School

Director James Cameron is known for over the top science fiction thrillers like "Avatar" and "Terminator." But his latest vision is much more down to Earth. The 60-year-old and his wife Suzy Amis have announced that the private school they opened together in 2006 will be entirely plant-based.

"Plant-based eating — meaning the meals that are served at MUSE will be 100 percent plant-based," James Cameron said. "The average person would say vegan, but we say whole food, plant-based. It's about raising kids who don't think it's strange or exotic or worthy of a pat on the back to be doing the right thing for the living biosphere."

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The private elementary school in Calabasas, Calif. was founded by the Camerons and Suzy Amis’s sister Rebecca, a child development expert. The MUSE school opened in 2006.

"In the fall of 2015, MUSE will be the only school we are aware of that is completely plant-based," Suzy Amis Cameron told the crowd at a Feb. 19 party for Amis' Red Carpet Green Dress campaign, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The school’s students will no longer eat nor will they utilize meat products at the school.

“(The ideal) is teaching children starting at two years old about the environment and taking care of it, so it’s part of the fabric growing up,” Cameron told The Daily News last summer.

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A United Nations report a few years back urged that a vegan diet was the only way to support the world’s growing population and the consumption that goes along with it. The Earth’s resources are being pulled in too many directions.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

As a result, many more people are going completely plant-based and instilling the same ethos in their children. People like Bill Clinton, Biz Stone (the co-founder of Twitter), Russell Brand, Mike Tyson, Ozzy Osbourne, Steve Wynn, and Carl Lewis are all known for their plant-based diets. Even Oprah and her staff did a 21 day vegan cleanse.

Using the term plant-based instead of vegan is meant to seem much less extreme, but starting kids off early is definitely a great way to instill good habits. Even for those that don’t go completely vegan, cutting back drastically on the consumption of animal products and only choosing high quality and organic when you do indulge can also have a huge impact. This could also help with a growing childhood obesity problem that leads to a host of chronic diseases later in life like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, for example.